Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (44 page)

There was no answer.

He tried again. Louder. More urgency in his voice.

Still he got no response.

Goddamn it
, he thought to himself.
Why did I let
him go out without me?

With the business-end of his pistol out in front, he cleared
the tiny buildings starting left and working right and, like the lonely Tahoe,
found all three abandoned and empty.

He popped out of the third building closest to the garage
and scanned the perimeter one final time, walking his gaze along the fence line
to the gate, then back to the brambles and the long-idled heavy machinery. He
looked over at Daymon and placed his hand up, palm out, fingers spread
slightly—another silent signal telling him to stay put. Then for some reason
something about the damp earth’s appearance a dozen yards behind the Tahoe
piqued his interest. But seeing as how he was closer to the garage, he made a
mental list that placed examining the disturbed ground between checking the
garage’s perimeter and fully sweeping its interior. The latter he decided, based
on the sheer size of the place, he wouldn’t be doing alone.

When he neared the pale green door, which rather ominously
was blood-spattered and hanging ajar, he couldn’t help but notice the destroyed
lock and bullet holes puckering the steel where presumably Logan or one of the
others had used their weapon to gain entry. Seeing only cheap-looking furniture
inside the gloom, he moved on. With the .45’s muzzle tracking his gaze, he cut
the corner wide and wound around back, along the way making all of the same
observations and assumptions as Logan had concerning the newness of the roller
doors out front and the recently-installed windows on the far southernmost
side.

Duncan was nobody’s fool, and possessing a strong intuition
and usually infallible gut instinct ran in the Winters family. And as he stood
near the corner of the building and watched the rotor blades cut the air above
the chopper, the mental note hit his in-box, spurring him into action.

He ambled onto the crushed rock parking lot where he
followed a zig-zag pattern to the spot of disturbed earth that he’d noticed
earlier.

One look was all it took for all of the pieces of the puzzle
to fall into place. He walked a wide rectangle, boots crunching a cadence, his
mind wrestling with a new set of clues. Positioned in a sort of semi-circle,
blending in with the like-colored earth, were a dozen brass shell casings, all
of them 5.56 and probably from an AR or M4-type carbine.
Not good
, he
thought as he continued the search. A dozen yards from where he found the
brass, on the periphery of the disturbed area, he spotted a number of black
playing cards that had found their way into the puddles, became waterlogged,
and were now sitting at the bottom.

Instantly his stomach constricted. A frigid tremor wracked
his body as he bent over and plucked one from the water. It was an Ace of
Spades.
Death cards.
He’d seen them before in Vietnam usually
accompanying the mutilated corpse of one of his brothers-in-arms. He turned it
over and over in his hand—thinking—but still didn’t recognize what the
blood-red logo on the opposite side represented. The image was of some kind of
medieval warrior in full battle dress, wearing a plumed helmet with a thin slit
for eyes. He pocketed the card and the .45 went back on his hip in its
high-riding holster. He ducked his head, covered his face and sprinted back to
the helicopter. Yanked the door open and shut the Black Hawk down. Meeting
Daymon’s eyes and noting the perplexed look on the man’s face, Duncan snatched
up an M4 carbine from the back compartment, nodded in the direction of the
garage, and mouthed, “Follow me.”

Once the turbines had quieted down and the rotor blades were
stilled, and he and Duncan were twenty feet from the bird, Daymon asked, “I saw
you inspecting the ground. What did you learn?”

Duncan halted, turned towards Daymon, and hung his head. He
removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Finally he replaced his
glasses, met the younger man’s gaze, and replied, “Whoever
was
here,
ain’t here any longer.”

Trying to ruffle away the dome shape the helmet had pressed
into his dreadlocks, Daymon said, “Can you elaborate? ‘Cause I’m no good at
guessing games.”

“A couple of helicopters set down over there behind
Charlie’s cruiser. One had skids like a Huey, only different. The other marked
the ground up just like ours. The wheels were side by side and there was also a
wheel out back. Probably a type of Black Hawk, which leads me to believe the
other ship was one of those Little Birds ... like those special ops helos I saw
flitting about Schriever. ”

“Begs the question then ... who were they? And where did
they spirit your brother, Gus, and the ladies off to?”

Like a portent of things to come, a stiff wind gust banged
the office door against the wall.

“I’m not so sure they’ve been taken.” He hinged at the
waist, placed a hand on his knee and took a couple of deep breaths. “I don’t
like what I’ve seen so far. In fact, my gut is telling me something I don’t
want to hear.”

Resting the shotgun on his shoulder, Daymon opened his mouth
like he was going to say something, but thought better of it and remained
silent.

“Found some spent brass back there. Now I’m terrified to set
foot in that building,” Duncan said, gesturing at the creaking door.

“I’ll go first,” Daymon said, leveling his weapon at the
doorway. He took the steps in one stride and covered his mouth against the
pungent reek of death that hit him the moment he crossed the threshold into the
low-ceilinged room.

Seeing this, Duncan put his boot on the first step.

Voice muffled by his free hand, Daymon looked back and said,
“You better not. I’ll do this alone.”

***

Three minutes later, by Duncan’s watch, Daymon emerged from
the door carrying Logan’s crushed and bloodied bowler. Looking every bit a
walking corpse, ashen-faced and speechless, the dreadlocked man sat down hard
on the top stair.

Then, without saying a word—because none could describe the
pain he was feeling—Duncan turned and slumped against the rust-streaked wall,
riding it to the ground where he sat with his arms wrapped around his head for
a good ten minutes.

Schriever AFB

In order to leave the landing pad clear for the Chinook and
put the Ford back down in roughly the same location it had been before launch,
Ari had to make the unannounced but very necessary sideslip maneuver—that even
to Cade, who was used to riding in all types of aircraft, had seemed very
uncharacteristic at the time, considering the helicopter wasn’t taking enemy
fire.

“Bad choice of words,” Ari said over the shipwide comms as
he leveled the bird out. “Whipper tells me he has an important passenger on the
tarmac who we need to get on board.”

Cade’s mind ran in circles as he craned around and looked
outside to see who might be waiting. The first candidate that crossed his mind
was Colonel Shrill. Maybe the man had decided at the last minute that he wanted
to pop in on Major Beeson unannounced and conduct a surprise inspection in
person. If so, Greg was
not
going to be happy. Maybe President Valerie
Clay and Major Freda Nash were going come aboard and put on another full court
press to try and convince him to stay at Schriever and continue running ops for
them. If so,
Brook
was not going to be happy.
No use speculating
,
he told himself. Resting his head against the bulkhead, he watched the scenery
outside the window crawl slowly upward as if their takeoff had been recorded
and was now being played back in reverse.

The mountains were momentarily visible through the small
porthole window. Then the Zs crowding the distant fencing gave way to blue sky,
which was quickly blotted out by the flat, squared-off rooftops of the nearby
aircraft hangars. Lastly, a supernova-like glare illuminated the helo’s dark
interior as they put down next to the truck which had spun a few degrees while
airborne and was now sitting perpendicular, almost as if it were about to
T-bone the helicopter, its newly-cleaned windshield simultaneously reflecting
and amplifying the ascending sun.

Finally the Chinook came to rest, its bulbous tires and
substantial hydraulic shock absorbers making the landing even softer than Cade
had prayed for.

Then the stone-faced African American flight engineer
unhooked his safety harness, strode aft along the metal gangway, and hit a
switch that started the rear ramp on a downward journey.

Accompanied by a steady hydraulic whine, inch by inch the
metal maw parted, allowing in harsh white bars of light which temporarily
blinded everyone inside the helo.

When a semblance of normal vision finally returned, Cade
panned his gaze aft at their new passenger and was suddenly flooded by a
feeling of been-there-done-that when he recognized the fully-framed silhouette.

Utah

Though Duncan had skipped the section in the DHS flight
manual concerning the Black Hawk’s performance thresholds, judging by the
intermittent blips and bleeps coming from the cockpit warning systems as they
hammered along a couple of hundred feet above the treetops pushing one hundred
and fifty knots, it suddenly occurred to him that whatever they were, he was
probably nearing or exceeding many of them.

With the turbines whining, high-pitched overhead, and the
main rotor beating a sad cadence against the moisture-laden air, he nosed the
Black Hawk on a westward heading, keeping the livewire glint of the Ogden river
off to their left and SR-39 meandering lazily below.

Then for at least the tenth time during the short flight, he
looked over his left shoulder just to make sure he wasn’t stuck in a
never-ending nightmare. But sure enough, Gus’s and Logan’s corpses were real
and still back there, lying crossways in the cabin, wrapped in sheets stripped
from the bunks in the subterranean shelter. And even in his side vision, Duncan
could see that the crimson blooms, roughly center mass on each of the bodies
where the murderers had scored tightly-grouped shots, were steadily spreading
across the white fabric like some kind of unstoppable virus.

Daymon adjusted the boom mike and asked, “What’s on your
mind, sir?”

Twisting his head owl-like and fixing a no-nonsense stare in
Daymon’s direction, Duncan drawled, “No, you didn’t. I will
not
have you
and Phil both calling me sir. Duncan works for me. Or Winters. Hell ... you can
even call me Chief if it’s OK with
the
Chief.”

“Sorry,” replied Daymon.

“In reply to your pansy-ass try at pulling an end-around of
my defenses, I’ll honor the effort and lay it all out on the table for you.”

Save for the air rushing by the cockpit, and the din of the
engines and the complex mechanicals all working in unison to keep the five-ton
aircraft aloft, there was a long uneasy silence. “
Revenge
is on my
mind,” Duncan finally said. “No more live-and-let-live bullshit. I should have
gutted that Chance kid when I had the
chance
.” He chuckled at his play
on words—the sound low and menacing. “Scorched earth is my new policy. In fact,
right now all I want to do is channel my inner Genghis Khan and burn Huntsville
to the fuckin’ ground—man, woman, and child. And then I want to skull fuck
every one of the corpses of those animals that killed my little brother. He was
only
thirty-five. I’ve got a Zippo lighter that’s older than that boy. I
was
not
supposed to outlive him, Daymon. And every second that the
assholes who did this are alive on this earth and stealing air from the rest of
us is an affront ... a slap in the face to how he lived his life.
He-was-a-good-boy—”

Daymon watched with rapt interest as the old man’s voice
rose and spittle flew from his mouth and landed on the controls and gauges.
Suddenly something appeared to jog Duncan’s memory, and as if a switch had been
flicked he stopped talking and looked around. Simultaneously he flared and
slowed the helicopter, abruptly changing its course.

Daymon contemplated Duncan’s lengthy diatribe, which, even
when taking into account the recent turn of events, seemed way out-of-character
considering the old man’s usually unflappable demeanor and easygoing manner. He
received a second’s reprieve as his attention was drawn to a troop of rotters
banging down the road toward Huntsville. Then he resumed trying to decide which
approach he was going to use should Duncan’s actions inch any closer towards
unpredictability. And while the silent battle between doing nothing and
stepping in and putting himself out there raged internally, the rotor sounds
changed from a fast, high-pitched
whip-whip-whip
to a metronomic, almost
hypnotic
whop-whop-whop
. What happened next was entirely unexpected, as
he felt his stomach buoy up and lodge in his throat. In the same instant he
looked down through the footwell and realized the ground was rushing up at him.

Schriever AFB

Although Cade wasn’t one hundred percent certain who was
climbing the Chinook’s loading ramp, judging by the slender form and the
whipping ponytail his money was on the raven-haired girl he’d saved from a
grisly death at Grand Junction Regional just days ago.

Wilson, however, was oblivious to her presence because he
had reburied his head in his hands the moment Cade had reassured him that Ari’s
sudden maneuver had been planned and the chopper was in no danger of crashing.

So with his initial assumption having been confirmed by the
instant reaction the new arrival invoked in both Raven and Sasha, Cade sat
back, slightly amused, and waited for Wilson to catch on.